It sits, almost as thought it is waiting for someone, though of course it can't really do that. It's just a void, after all.

Yet the space seems too empty. It was not made to be this silent, this vacant. Something needs to happen, but nothing does.

So although time moves on outside, steady and strong, the stillness of the white space remains, unchanging and lonesome.

Just white space, Just silence. Just empt—

"Hello?"

A solitary figure pops into existence, materializing into where there had once been only white void. At the sound of her voice, a single word appears, floating up high.

"Hello?" she calls again. "Is anyone there?"

The void has no consciousness, and so it does not respond. But four more words join the first up above. 

The girl laughs softly to herself and looks around. "Yeah, I guess not. Was worth a shot, though." She sighs. "It's been way too long since I've been here."

She sets off at a soft stride through the white space, ignoring the words appearing as she speaks. "Sorry. I did mean to come back earlier. I really did. I think I even promised that in the last post I wrote. But . . ." She trails off, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I don't even have a good excuse, honestly. It's not like anything huge happened this year that prevented me from blogging. I just didn't blog."

A beanbag chair pops into existence, and she sits down on it. "I mean, it wasn't for lack of trying. I drafted a solid, what, seven blog posts this year? Which isn't a lot, but it's still something. But I just . . . never published them for whatever reason." 

A block of text appears in front of her, scrolling before her like the end credits of a movie. She smiles, but a sad nostalgia lingers in her eyes. "I miss blogging, but more and more I feel like that girl who blogged so much in 2019 and 2020 isn't me anymore. She had . . . interesting thoughts, actually. Meanwhile it seems like I can barely write a coherent sentence anymore." She laughs again, and the scrolling text vanishes.

"Maybe it is time for me to give up blogging."

Most of the other things the girl has said have been muted in the white space. But these words ring in the air, like an echo chamber, and when their text counterparts appear, they seem bolder. She listens to their sound fade before speaking again.

"I mean, it's not exactly news that the blogosphere isn't what it once was. Most of the bloggers I met when I started have stopped blogging and moved on to other endeavors. Which is fine! But . . . I also do miss the community that once was here. Not that my absence has particularly helped to solve that, but . . ." She trails off again and sighs. 

"I guess I let my insecurities catch up with my blog." She stands from the beanbag chair and paces in front of it, fidgeting with her hands. "And I'm not quite sure how to fix that yet, except to start blogging again.

"But I can't blog like everyone else. I don't have the deep theological or philosophical thoughts that they do—or that I tried to have when I first started blogging. But maybe that's okay. I don't know. It doesn't feel like enough, though.

"Maybe it's not enough."

Like before, those last words ring more loudly than the others, their text counterparts lingering below just a hair longer than usual.

She sighs. "It's too quiet in here. There used to be so much color, you know? So much teal."

She pauses.

"How do I even start blogging again? I feel like I've forgotten how. How do I turn my half-formed thoughts into coherent blog posts? Is it even worth it?"

The text hovering above her head nearly resembles a storm cloud.

"Why did I even start this blog anyways?"

A moment of stillness, and then new text appears in front of her. This text is different. The letters almost seem to pop out of their straight lines, to ring with almost-spoken sounds. Teal squiggles pop out of the words, flitting away and vanishing. She squints and leans forward to read it.

"Did I write that?" the girl muses. "Wow, that was back in . . . 2020." She laughs. "How did I manage to lose my way since then?" 

She thinks for a moment. "Maybe . . . maybe if I just focused on that, maybe if I didn't try to be the Smartest Person Ever™ [yes, she says the ™ out loud] or try to be 110% correct about everything, and if I just wrote about stories—maybe that's what I can do."

She nods to herself. "It won't be life-changing, but maybe it doesn't have to be. Not many people will read it anymore, but maybe large audiences aren't the most important thing. Maybe genuine community is."

She thinks about that a bit more, putting her hand to her chin. The quote still hovers before her. 

"Welp," she finally says. "It won't be the same, but I guess one more try can't hurt, can it?"

Headphones and a laptop appear by her feet. She sits back in the beanbag chair, puts the headphones on, and flips the laptop open. "It's been far too long," she says, and she presses Enter.

And a single musical note rings out in the white space, and suddenly it doesn't feel so empty anymore.